Year 4 Summer Term Newsletter

Summer term Curriculum Letter

Welcome back to school and to the summer term, the final term of the year. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter break and enjoyed eating lots of chocolate eggs. This is a very important term for the children. Not only will they be practising for the National Literacy and Numeracy tests, but we will also be consolidating and extending the work covered in Year 4, so that firm foundations are laid ready for the children’s transition in to Year 5.
There are lots of exciting activities planned for the summer term and the following information outlines what your child will be learning.
For the first half of the summer term we will be continuing with our project, ‘The Wonderful World of Games!’

After half term, the children have decided they would like their topic to be ‘Nature.’ We will be deciding the name of our topic soon.

Literacy:
Our literacy work this term will be linked directly to our project, where children will be continuing to consolidate and extend core literacy skills through various activities such as; writing a newspaper article, writing a persuasive letter, creating a questionnaire, as well as creating an iMovie trailer. We have linked all of our literacy work to our project which allows us to establish meaningful contexts in which to develop Oracy, Reading and Writing skills.

Reading:
The children will continue to be introduced to a range of reading material through individual books, group guided reading books and class shared texts. Pupils are expected to read daily at home under the guidance of parents. Please take time to sit down and read with them and discuss the content/story-line to encourage greater understanding of the text. Guided reading sessions take place throughout the week so that all children have an opportunity to read and develop their reading skills. In addition, all children will read daily during Year 4’s ERIC time (Everyone Reads in Class), which takes place between 8:50 and 9:00am every morning.

Spellings:
Pupils will be given spellings to learn on a Friday and will be tested on the following Friday. Lists are taken from the National Literacy Strategy and may also include class or topic spellings. Please take a few minutes each day to use the Look, Cover, Write, Check method or any of the other suggested methods at the front of their homework books.

Numeracy:
We follow the teaching objectives outlined in the National Numeracy Strategy. Class lessons include mental maths activities followed by a main teaching activity. During the Summer Term the children will continue to develop their understanding of place value, time, written methods, fractions, decimals and percentages; alongside improving their application of shape, space and measures. Pupils are required to learn their tables on a regular basis. Pupil’s mental maths skills will usually be tested for speed and accuracy on a Friday.

Science:
This term our Science topic links to our class project, ‘Wonderful World of Games’. The children will focus on the topic ‘Electricity’ where we will look at electrical circuits and sustainable energy. The children will learn through scientific investigation, developing their thinking skills along with attaining knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts.

Geography:
The children will develop their mapping skills by locating the different places around the world where games are made. This will develop their understanding of where different seas, continents and countries are located around the world. To develop the use of maths across the curriculum, the children will also be conducting a maths based project, where they will be enhancing maths skills such as: budgeting, money, as well as a range of mental and written strategies.

ICT:
Throughout our project the children will use Google Drive to plan, create, develop and combine information with a sense of purpose and awareness of audience, as well as collaborating with other learners. They will also learn how to use the internet for research, following safety guidelines & discussing issues relating to internet safety. We will also be focussing on data handling and coding this term.

D&T:
Children will be designing and creating their own board games in small groups, which they will share at our gaming event.

Music:
To link with our class project, the children will be using Garage Band to create a them tune to accompany the advert they create for the board games that they created.

Welsh:
Learners will continue to develop, consolidate and extend their language skills in Welsh this term. They will be using language patterns already learnt and building on these as well as new patterns, developing their skills in reading, writing and speaking.

PE:
This term we will be focusing on Athletics and continuing our Tag Rugby sessions with Janice from Gwent Dragons. Our P.E. sessions are on Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon. Due to Health and Safety issues, the children are not allowed to wear jewellery during P.E. and Games. It is really important that your child has their P.E. kit in school on these days so that they can participate in lessons. Children need their trainers in school for both sessions.

Homework:
Homework is given on a weekly basis to consolidate and support concepts that have been taught during the week. In addition to spellings and practicing multiplication facts, children will also be given homework relating to work completed in the classroom. This term homework will also include test style questions in preparation for the National Tests in May. Your child will be sent home with test style questions that they can access online and comprehension style activities. Homework books are to be handed in every Thursday and will be sent home again on Friday with new homework. I also post the homework every week on the school website.

Pupil Voice:
At Glasllwch the children are encouraged to participate in their own learning. We believe that asking pupils about what they would like to learn is fundamental to providing an engaging and inspiring curriculum. Please could you highlight any further questions your child may have about this topic to support this child led approach.
Parent helpers are always welcome, if you feel you would like to help in any way with the above topics; perhaps you have specialist knowledge of a subject that you could share with the children or perhaps you have items of particular interest, then please do come in to see me.

I do hope this has given you some insight into what your child will be learning and participating in this term. If you have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

I appreciate your support in all that we are striving to do in school, and hope that we can continue to work together to ensure that your child enjoys learning and reaches their full potential in Year 4.